Posts tagged ‘Colonies’

We are all familiar with ant trails, traced by those long lines of scurrying ants. If you should follow such a trail, you would find that it leads to a good supply of food that the ants are collecting for the ant nest.

Most common ants see poorly or not at all. Blind ants get along very well by using the two “feelers,” or antennae, that wave constantly from their head to smell, taste and touch everything about them.

To collect food, they follow “odor trails” left by other ants.

Ant Trails

When an ant finds food it becomes excited and hurries back to the nest, leaving an odor trail for the ants at home to follow.

Soon there is a steady trail of ants going to and from the new food supply.

Ants do not live and work in groups called “colonies.”

Each ant has its own duties. An ant colony is made up mostly of worker ants.

Some do the housekeeping and take care of the queen and the baby ants. Some defend the nest against intruders, while others gather food.

Termites are small antlike insects that feed on wood. Like ants, termites live in large colonies, in which there is a king and queen, many workers that build and tend the most and search for food and soldier termites that guard the next from insect enemies.

Termite nests are hidden in wood or in the ground.

Termites will eat nearly everything made of wood, including paper. Those are live in the forests serve a useful function by cleaning away dead wood. But when they attack our houses and belongings, that is a different story.

Oddly enough, the termite cannot digest the wood it oats. The stomachs of termite workers are filled with little one-called creatures called protozoans.

The termite chews the wood and swallows the tiny chips. The protozoans feed on the cellulose in the wood and convert it into foods that both the protozoans and the termite live on. – Dick Rogers